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LinkedIn Publisher – My initial thoughts

Some of you may have seen my first posts on LinkedIn new publisher platform which is an extension of the influencer program they rolled out last year.

I thought I would share with you my initial observations and also some of my concerns. Firstly I think this is an excellent addition to LinkedIn and look forward to reading some of the posts in the coming weeks and seeing how it is rolls out. My first piece received amazing exposure receiving 10,500 views in the first 24 hours and drew 10% of this traffic to my website which means its life span it goes without saying is far greater than a tweet. Also because the audience is global normal rules for timing postings don’t apply.

You are only as good as your last blog

Yes the reach is great but you are only as good as your last blog. Remember it’s about the audience and not about you so unless you think you what the audience wants to read you won’t get the views or share. Unlike the influencers, publisher is more about engagement and conversation. Also I think you will get more story telling and sincere voices rather than pieces written by the Influencers marketing or PR people. It is also good for positioning yourself as a thought leader and showcasing some of your knowledge.

Spam alert and the noise

It will be interesting to see who LinkedIn dish these out to and also how they deal with the spam because it does run the risk of looking like many LinkedIn groups therefore losing readers due to the spammy ness and self promotion. I also think people may over blog which will make a lot of noise and may affect the quality as after the first 24 hours the posts are not so visible.

LinkedIn does own your content, but if you care about your domain and SEO you shouldn’t be duplicating your content anyway. I also agree with Katrina Collier this shouldn’t replace your own blog and the followers you get from using the site will see your content when you update your status with links to your blog. I would suggest running this alongside your own blog and if there a piece that gets lots of interest you use your blog to go into more detail.

The only thing I can really fault is because LinkedIn assign you a category so whatever the post is assign to the category which in my case is Recruiting and Hiring. I only know this as I also posted Call me Little Miss Bossy which should have been in leadership or Women so didn’t really get the right exposer as it was not seen by the right audience.

Final thoughts – I have a love/hate relationship’s with LinkedIn, but Publisher it is a win win situation. I am going to continue to publish on LinkedIn as it helps me broaden my reach and network as a freelancer.